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Friday, March 1, 2013

Senator Kay Hagen (Dem, NC) sent me an email yesterday evening. Well, that's a bit of a stretch. Actually her newsletter maven included me in the tens of thousands of other registered Democratic voters in the distribution list. Care to guess the subject? Why it was the sequestration and its dire consequences of course, especially on defense matters.Here's the money quote:"With
little time left for Congress to act, I’m deeply concerned about the effects
that sequestration would have on our state. While
reducing our national debt is one of my top priorities, indiscriminate,
unprioritized [sic] cuts on the backs of our service members are not the way to get
our fiscal house in order. The packs they carry and the burdens they've shouldered are heavy enough without the threat of sequestration. Sequestration
would have harmful effects on our armed forces by diminishing future military
readiness and jeopardizing our country’s national security. It would also
threaten our state’s fragile economic recovery."Well, my BS detector started to buzz like a Geiger counter dropped in the Hanford B reactor, so I decided to reply, silly me.F*** you, Kay. You and Lord Zero have put us this position with your
profligate spending on key interest groups (people who mostly don’t pay Federal
taxes, btw) at the expense of hard-pressed middle-class people like me who
can’t even afford a new car (and can hardly find a decent and cheap used car
thanks to “Cash for Clunkers”, thank you very much, Barack Hussein Obama) If
you think the sequestration, a mere 2.4%
of last year’s record spending of 3.6 X 10^12 USD is tough now (one must
realize how f’ed we really are when deficit spending is more easily handled
using scientific notation), what will you say when the interest on the federal
debt becomes the biggest line item in the budget… Budget? What the hell am I
thinking, there hasn’t been a budget resolution brought to the Senate floor in
almost four years -- in direct contravention of the Budget and Accounting Act
of 1921 and the Congressional
Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, I might add. Fortunately for you and
Harry Reid these two federal laws have no sanctions clause so you’re in no
danger of the leg irons and orange jump suit awaiting me if I stray one iota
from the laws you like to impose on the little people (you remember, the people
whose duty is to pay up and shut up?). But I digress, the fact is the
sequestration is minuscule in relative terms to what little people like me have
to endure in this low-to-no growth economy your lord and master promised to
solve in his first term, not to mention the creeping inflation that makes it
nearly impossible to travel or even afford to eat. I’ve pared back my lifestyle
at least 150% from the Bush days, therefore I don’t see why a bunch of smart
people with fancy degrees can’t make do with 97 cents where you had a dollar
before. Don’t knock it before you try it, you might even discover the
Government can live a bit more cheaply and still not actually starve (I’ve
learned Spaghetti-Os three nights a week helps make the occasional meal out
with friends more affordable.)

And on the subject of travel and
paychecks -- since you’re so concerned about soldiers and weaponry, instead of
taking so much out of the defense budget (I never knew you were such a hawk,
Kay.) why not take a pay cut in the Senate. Pare back your earnings a slightly,
trim your bloated staff a smidgen (I’m looking at you metaphorically, Mr. or
Ms. Newsletter Honcho, among others), curtail your jet-powered peregrinations a
wee bit, and the aircraft carrier might get refueled. “Not enough!” did you say?
Probably so, I admit. Perhaps the President can help out. He can start by not
charging his $1000 per hour golf lessons to Uncle Sugar. He can also cut out
the quarterly vacation junkets. Did I hear you harrumph about George W. Bush’s
vacations? Point taken, but I thought GWB was an ogre -- a profligate
war-mongering thug, or at least that’s what the Democratic myrmidons of the
press told me every day for eight years. If the current president is taking the
president formerly known as Chimpy McHitler for a model of fiscal probity (i.e.
if Bush can spend X on his creature comforts then it is perfectly correct for
Obama to do likewise), then all I can say is ogre is as ogre does.I think the root of the problem is you
guys don’t know how to shop. If the Corps wants toothpaste for every Marine
somebody in Washington must pull out a well-thumbed Neiman Marcus catalog.
Instead try the Family Dollar Store once in a while. Better yet why not let us
do it? We’ve weathered the Obama Depression without mass starvation (so far) so
we must have learned a thing or two about economizing. I figure Federal
expenditure this year will amount to about $11,400 per capita, so let us have
it. Cut a check to every man, woman and child in the good old U.S. of A and
then let us handle the spending. We can form little corporations to buy M-1
tanks and F-22s. The more pacific of us can form societies to buy the deserving
poor a bit of relief and health care. Those of us who give a shit about global
warming may spend their $11,400 on Rube Goldberg contraptions that make ungodly
noise, chop migratory birds into cat chow, and use more energy than they
generate, though I doubt it. (I find having the cash in the hand makes one a
bit more circumspect, don’t you agree?)

I perceive a deafening silence at your end, Kay.
Oh well… I must have nothing better to
do than type replies to emails that will never be read by the Senator in whose
name the message was sent. I’m not totally unhip, you know.
I know that whoever (if anyone at all) downloads the
Hagan_Newsletter@hagen.senate.gov account will never pass this on to the lady
herself. It will be metaphorically balled up and tossed indignantly into the
virtual “cylindrical filing cabinet”, but it makes me feel better none the
less.